Mesa Unix/X11 Information Installation ============ There are two ways to compile Mesa on Unix/X11 systems: 1. The old way: First type 'make' alone to see the list of system configurations currently supported. If you see your configuration on the list, type 'make <config>'. Most popular Unix/X workstations are currently supported. If your system configuration is not listed by 'make', you'll have to modify the top-level Makefile and Make-config files. There are instructions in each file. When finished, the Mesa libraries will be in the Mesa-x.y/lib/ directory. 2. The new way: Type './configure' and then 'make'. This uses GNU autoconfig. Run 'make check' to build the demos. See docs/INSTALL for more details. When finished, the Mesa libraries will be in the Mesa-x.y/src/.libs/, Mesa-x.y/si-glu/.libs, etc directories. Notes on assembly language optimizations: When using the old-style Makefiles, you can specify a configuration that uses X86 assembly language optimizations (linux-3dnow for example). The detection of MMX, 3DNow!, PIII/SSE, etc capability is done at runtime. That means you can compile Mesa for 3DNow! optimizations even if you don't have an AMD CPU. However, your Linux binutils and assembler must understand the special instructions in order to compile them. If you have compilation problems, try upgrading your binutils. Header and library files: After you've compiled Mesa and tried the demos I recommend the following procedure for "installing" Mesa. Copy the Mesa include/GL directory to /usr/local/include: cp -r include/GL /usr/local/include Copy the Mesa library files to /usr/local/lib: cp lib/* /usr/local/lib (actually, use "cp -d" on Linux to preserve symbolic links) Xt/Motif widgets: If you want to use Mesa or OpenGL in your Xt/Motif program you can build the widgets found in either the widgets-mesa or widgets-sgi directories. The former were written for Mesa and the later are the original SGI widgets. Look in those directories for more information. Notes: HP users: a Mesa user reports that the HP-UX 10.01 C compiler has a bug which effects glReadPixels. A patch for the compiler (PHSS_5743) is available. Otherwise be sure your compiler is version 10.13 or later. QNX users: if you have problems running the demos try setting the stack size to 200K or larger with -N200K, for example. SunOS 5.x users: The X shared memory extension may not work correctly. If Mesa prints an error message to the effect of "Shared memory error" then you'll have to append the following three lines to the end of your /etc/system file then reboot: set shmsys:shminfo_shmmax = 0x2000000 set shmsys:shminfo_shmmni = 0x1000 set shmsys:shminfo_shmseg = 0x100 Using the library ================= Configuration options: The file src/config.h has many parameters which you can adjust such as maximum number of lights, clipping planes, maximum texture size, etc. In particular, you may want to change DEPTH_BITS from 16 to 32 if a 16-bit depth buffer isn't precise enough for your application. Shared libraries: If you compile shared libraries you may have to set an environment variable to specify where the Mesa libraries are located. On Linux and Sun systems for example, set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable to include /your-dir/Mesa-2.6/lib. Otherwise, when you try to run a demo it may fail with a message saying that one or more libraries couldn't be found. Remote display of OpenGL/GLX programs: As of version 1.2.3, Mesa's header files use the same GLenum and GLUenum values as SGI's (and most/all other vendor's) OpenGL headers. This means you can freely mix object files compiled with OpenGL or Mesa headers. In fact, on systems with dynamic runtime linkers it's possible to dynam- ically link with Mesa or OpenGL shared libraries at runtime, without recompiling or relinking anything! Using IRIX 5.x as an example, you can run SGI's OpenGL demos with the Mesa shared libraries as follows. Let's assume you're installing Mesa in /usr/local/Mesa and using the C-shell: % cd /usr/local/Mesa % make irix5-dso % setenv _RLD_LIST "/usr/local/Mesa/lib/libGL.so:DEFAULT" % /usr/demos/bin/ideas_ogl // this is a test You can now run OpenGL executables on almost any X display! There may be some problems from the fact that Mesa supports many X visual types that an OpenGL client may not expect (grayscale for example). In this case the application may abort, print error messages, or just behave strangely. You may have to experiment with the MESA_RGB_VISUAL envi- ronment variable. Xt/Motif Widgets: Two versions of the Xt/Motif OpenGL drawing area widgets are included: widgets-sgi/ SGI's stock widgets widgets-mesa/ Mesa-tuned widgets Look in those directories for details Togl: Togl is an OpenGL/Mesa widget for Tcl/Tk. See http://togl.sourceforge.net for more information. X Display Modes: Mesa supports RGB(A) rendering into almost any X visual type and depth. The glXChooseVisual function tries its best to pick an appropriate visual for the given attribute list. However, if this doesn't suit your needs you can force Mesa to use any X visual you want (any supported by your X server that is) by setting the MESA_RGB_VISUAL and MESA_CI_VISUAL environment variables. When an RGB visual is requested, glXChooseVisual will first look if the MESA_RGB_VISUAL variable is defined. If so, it will try to use the specified visual. Similarly, when a color index visual is requested, glXChooseVisual will look for the MESA_CI_VISUAL variable. The format of accepted values is: <visual-class> <depth> Here are some examples: using the C-shell: % setenv MESA_RGB_VISUAL "TrueColor 8" // 8-bit TrueColor % setenv MESA_CI_VISUAL "PseudoColor 12" // 12-bit PseudoColor % setenv MESA_RGB_VISUAL "PseudoColor 8" // 8-bit PseudoColor using the KornShell: $ export MESA_RGB_VISUAL="TrueColor 8" $ export MESA_CI_VISUAL="PseudoColor 12" $ export MESA_RGB_VISUAL="PseudoColor 8" Double buffering: Mesa can use either an X Pixmap or XImage as the backbuffer when in double buffer mode. Using GLX, the default is to use an XImage. The MESA_BACK_BUFFER environment variable can override this. The valid values for MESA_BACK_BUFFER are: Pixmap and XImage (only the first letter is checked, case doesn't matter). A pixmap is faster when drawing simple lines and polygons while an XImage is faster when Mesa has to do pixel-by-pixel rendering. If you need depth buffering the XImage will almost surely be faster. Exper- iment with the MESA_BACK_BUFFER variable to see which is faster for your application. Colormaps: When using Mesa directly or with GLX, it's up to the application writer to create a window with an appropriate colormap. The aux, tk, and GLUT toolkits try to minimize colormap "flashing" by sharing colormaps when possible. Specifically, if the visual and depth of the window matches that of the root window, the root window's colormap will be shared by the Mesa window. Otherwise, a new, private colormap will be allocated. When sharing the root colormap, Mesa may be unable to allocate the colors it needs, resulting in poor color quality. This can happen when a large number of colorcells in the root colormap are already allocated. To prevent colormap sharing in aux, tk and GLUT, define the environment variable MESA_PRIVATE_CMAP. The value isn't significant. Gamma correction: To compensate for the nonlinear relationship between pixel values and displayed intensities, there is a gamma correction feature in Mesa. Some systems, such as Silicon Graphics, support gamma correction in hardware (man gamma) so you won't need to use Mesa's gamma facility. Other systems, however, may need gamma adjustment to produce images which look correct. If in the past you thought Mesa's images were too dim, read on. Gamma correction is controlled with the MESA_GAMMA environment variable. Its value is of the form "Gr Gg Gb" or just "G" where Gr is the red gamma value, Gg is the green gamma value, Gb is the blue gamma value and G is one gamma value to use for all three channels. Each value is a positive real number typically in the range 1.0 to 2.5. The defaults are all 1.0, effectively disabling gamma correction. Examples using csh: % setenv MESA_GAMMA "2.3 2.2 2.4" // separate R,G,B values % setenv MESA_GAMMA "2.0" // same gamma for R,G,B The demos/gamma.c program may help you to determine reasonable gamma value for your display. With correct gamma values, the color intensities displayed in the top row (drawn by dithering) should nearly match those in the bottom row (drawn as grays). Alex De Bruyn reports that gamma values of 1.6, 1.6 and 1.9 work well on HP displays using the HP-ColorRecovery technology. Mesa implements gamma correction with a lookup table which translates a "linear" pixel value to a gamma-corrected pixel value. There is a small performance penalty. Gamma correction only works in RGB mode. Also be aware that pixel values read back from the frame buffer will not be "un-corrected" so glReadPixels may not return the same data drawn with glDrawPixels. For more information about gamma correction see: http://www.inforamp.net/~poynton/notes/colour_and_gamma/GammaFAQ.html Overlay Planes Overlay planes in the frame buffer are supported by Mesa but require hardware and X server support. To determine if your X server has overlay support you can test for the SERVER_OVERLAY_VISUALS property: xprop -root | grep SERVER_OVERLAY_VISUALS HPCR glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT) dithering If you set the MESA_HPCR_CLEAR environment variable then dithering will be used when clearing the color buffer. This is only applicable to HP systems with the HPCR (Color Recovery) system. Extensions ========== There are three Mesa-specific GLX extensions at this time. GLX_MESA_pixmap_colormap This extension adds the GLX function: GLXPixmap glXCreateGLXPixmapMESA( Display *dpy, XVisualInfo *visual, Pixmap pixmap, Colormap cmap ) It is an alternative to the standard glXCreateGLXPixmap() function. Since Mesa supports RGB rendering into any X visual, not just True- Color or DirectColor, Mesa needs colormap information to convert RGB values into pixel values. An X window carries this information but a pixmap does not. This function associates a colormap to a GLX pixmap. See the xdemos/glxpixmap.c file for an example of how to use this extension. GLX_MESA_release_buffers Mesa associates a set of ancillary (depth, accumulation, stencil and alpha) buffers with each X window it draws into. These ancillary buffers are allocated for each X window the first time the X window is passed to glXMakeCurrent(). Mesa, however, can't detect when an X window has been destroyed in order to free the ancillary buffers. The best it can do is to check for recently destroyed windows whenever the client calls the glXCreateContext() or glXDestroyContext() functions. This may not be sufficient in all situations though. The GLX_MESA_release_buffers extension allows a client to explicitly deallocate the ancillary buffers by calling glxReleaseBuffersMESA() just before an X window is destroyed. For example: #ifdef GLX_MESA_release_buffers glXReleaseBuffersMESA( dpy, window ); #endif XDestroyWindow( dpy, window ); This extension is new in Mesa 2.0. GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer This extension adds the glXCopySubBufferMESA() function. It works like glXSwapBuffers() but only copies a sub-region of the window instead of the whole window. This extension is new in Mesa version 2.6 Summary of X-related environment variables: MESA_RGB_VISUAL - specifies the X visual and depth for RGB mode (X only) MESA_CI_VISUAL - specifies the X visual and depth for CI mode (X only) MESA_BACK_BUFFER - specifies how to implement the back color buffer (X only) MESA_PRIVATE_CMAP - force aux/tk libraries to use private colormaps (X only) MESA_GAMMA - gamma correction coefficients (X only) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- $Id: README.X11,v 3.10 2003/03/08 17:38:57 brianp Exp $